I've got my new toy to boot from USB with SystemRescue 1.3.1 , which comes up beautifully with Gentoo using 'Altker32' (the 'default' kernel boots into some kind of emergency mode); despite what the intro help says, the desktop manager is Xfce, which is started via 'wizard' & offers basic useful apps, eg Terminal Emelfm Firefox Geany Gparted .
There's 1 problem : you hold F2 down to get BIOS, then use Esc for a boot menu (you have to go in/out of BIOS first). However, this doesn't work when I first switch the machine on : M$ XP starts regardless & I have to reboot from there to get BIOS, the boot menu & the USB (I've disabled 'quiet boot' in BIOS, but POST msgs still don't appear). Is this because it takes a few seconds before the USB stick warms up & gets recognised (its light blinks) ? This is important: if that's correct, I can wipe out XP & the machine will still recognise the USB stick & boot, but if the problem is something else (I don't know what it might be), I fear risking an unbootable box without even the M$ option remaining. Can anyone reassure me ? -- ========================,,============================================ SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT `-O----------O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
